Automate physical action with batch file.

*PS : This is just an idea, meaning I am not doing this in this way....

One of challenge for software testing automation is that sometimes we need to do some physical actions. In that case, we can "open CD-ROM tray". It may sound strange...

For example, we need to turn on XBox360 devkit, before start the testing. Unfortunately XBox360 devkit does not have any way to turn on the machine remotely. We have to manually press the power button in order to turn on the machine. The same thing applies to turning off.

We can place the computer and XBox360 devkit closely, so that when CD-Rom tray opens, it hits the power button of XBox360 devkit.

There are several free utility to open/close CD-ROM try.

I found an interesting YouTube clip that does this.